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Wireless printer suggestions


svl

Question

Looking for a new wireless printer, research is telling me everything sucks.  Anyone have any recommendations on a solid candidate? Mac household.

Thanks in advance.

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I've got a brother wireless laser printer that will be nine years old next month.  It's still going strong having lived through a full-time work-at-home wife and an undergrad and graduate student.  Everything about it has been perfect except the wireless which is beyond useless. The interface is very cumbersome and out of maybe a half dozen serious attempts to get the wireless up and running I have to start from scratch every couple of days.  I've always had other options so I give up after a week or so each time.  

In other words, steer clear of Brother if it must be a wireless connection.

If you're unable to find something with reliable wireless, I've used a powerline adaptor on mine for the last six years and it's worked flawlessly.

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I gave up on finding a decent color printer 7 years ago when I decided that I really didn't need color, black and white would suit my needs just fine,,, and boy what a difference that made. I picked up a Brother monochrome laser printer for $99 off Amazon and it's still chugging along,  no expensive color cartridges to pay for, the toner lasts quite a while actually.

It has a wireless function but I've never used it that way,,,,

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Brother is good, but even though they're improving, most printers for home use have crappy wireless.   If you can, get a printer with ethernet and wire it.  AirPrint will still function.  I've had a Samsung monochrome Laser for about 6 years, works great.  Has both ethernet and wireless.  

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We have a wireless HP that works when it wants, which is about 25% of the time and reeeally fucking aggravating. Couple that with no provision at all to wire it up and you have 75% of a boat anchor.

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I have had an HP LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw that has provided flawless operation for more than five years (not used often, but definitely used). It’s an AIO, so it does wireless scanning, as well. 
 

The HP toner refills cost more than the printer, so I went with generic refills from Precision Roller, all four for around $100, or 1/4 the cost of the HP equivalent. 
 

Ordered the printer from WalMart.com and picked it up at the store, shipped free. 

 

ETA: it appears that one is no longer in production.  I will say HP laser printers are fairly trouble-free.  I spent a couple of decades in banking using HP Laserjets with mostly flawless operation. The Fortune 100 bank I was with last (before I escaped) elected to make the 'value play' and replaced all with Lexmark - they never provided the reliability of HP. 

Also, others remarked about wireless issues; our HP has never once given me any wireless issues running full WPA2 encryption.  The machine interface couldn't be easier.

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I’ve got a HP Office Pro something... not at home to get the model. Does it all, fax copy scan etc. I print from my phone, laptop... neighbor stands outside the house and prints(has permission) Off his phone never an issue other than the ink cartridges seem expensive.  

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On 8/15/2020 at 1:12 AM, scottcald said:

Brother is good, but even though they're improving, most printers for home use have crappy wireless.   If you can, get a printer with ethernet and wire it.  AirPrint will still function.  I've had a Samsung monochrome Laser for about 6 years, works great.  Has both ethernet and wireless.  

I got a Brother about a year ago because it had great ratings and was relatively inexpensive and I have hated it for most of that time.  The print quality was never the greatest from Day One but I put up with it because it was not a top-of-the-line model.  However, the wireless is absolutely horrible.  More than half the time, when I hit the "print" button I get a message that says "looking for printer".  This can last 30 seconds, or it might last 5 minutes, or it might never print at all.  Sometimes even one print job prints instantly and I try to run a second, the second one will give the "looking for printer" error.  It was in my wife's office on the second floor of our house at first and my office is on the first so I blamed it on that but I have since moved to 10 feet away from my Mac with no obstructions between them and it still does it.  I've tried every troubleshooting tip they suggest and uninstalled and reinstalled more times than I can remember.  I will never give Brother another shot.

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I've had good luck with HP and epson lately has been better.  My son has issues with his windows connecting to the HP, but we don't with our macs.

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4 hours ago, tommy p said:

I got a Brother about a year ago because it had great ratings and was relatively inexpensive and I have hated it for most of that time.

That's a bummer to hear.  They used to be really good no matter the price point.  I basically stopped using printers wirelessly years ago because of the lack of reliability of the wireless.  

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Thanks for all the suggestions.  Been an Epson guy forever, really want to like the new Ecotank models but reviews have scared me off.

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20 hours ago, svl said:

Thanks for all the suggestions.  Been an Epson guy forever, really want to like the new Ecotank models but reviews have scared me off.

I’ve had an EcoTank for about six months, and so far has worked flawlessly. 

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Hi Syl, 

I have not yet cleaned the heads, unlike on my HP which required fairly frequent cleaning.  It may be I should clean the heads, (as a former sailor:  Ha ha!) but despite my inattention, the printer is working just fine.  

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Hello fella,

We have a subscription to Which magazine and website and we use that for working out what stuff we should go for for exactly this kind of thing. 
 

When we needed a new printer we checked out all the latest reviews on Which (they hold historic ones too) and did the following:

We use 2 - black and white Samsung Laser for docs and text - M2825DW - we bought it in 2014 - it’s been bulletproof and cheap to run. Wireless and duplex.
 

It was £110 new I think possibly discontinued now because I believe HP bought Samsung’s printer business.

 

At the same time we got an Epson XP-860 inkjet for colour and photo printing up to A4. We happily use third party inks With no issues. This one was £170 new.

 

Both are old now but merrily working away and are in use most days.

Thats pretty good in my book.

 

I’ll have a look at what stuff they reckon as the current best buys and let you know.

 

 

 

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Thanks, all.  Went with the Epson 7750- they r sold out everywhere but checking sites daily I finally lucked into one. It’ll b here tomorrow, looking forward to seeing how it performs.

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Got it today, effortless setup. WiFi works right out of the box. Did a quick (less than 3 seconds) photo print on plain paper, quality was stellar, can't wait to try it with photo paper and a high quality setting.

Thanks again for the suggestions!

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NICE! I just saw this, and was going to recommend an Eco-tank. We have had one at work for a year or two now, and have only had to refill the black ink once. We're still using the ink That CAME with the printer.  The quality is quite nice, and maintenance is relatively easy.

We used to have one of those HP printers that had separate ink carts and replaceable print heads and it was a GIANT PAIN IN MY ASS.

The wide format one looks NIIICE.  We really only need to print standard letter size stuff, so we didn't go for anything larger than the ET-4750.

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One of the big perks of the 7750 is that it's a Premium Expression printer, with a fifth ink called "Photo Black".  Gives a really deep, "inky" black to photo prints, ups the quality greatly.

So far, no issues (knock on wood).

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